So what is the difference between a software engineer and computer scientist?

If there is a God, I'm sure he's more pissed at the behaiver of his believers then by that of the non-believers.

Here's theory: there's a farily well known cognitive bias called the "false consensus effect".

Bascially, people tend to assume that others are more-or-less like themselves.

Good, decent people tend to people assume that others are good and decent and therefore don't really need to be preached at.

Dangerous, perverted, and evil people assume that others are the same and therefore need to be preached at, converted, policed, controlled, whatever.

Not to mention the nun with the world's best p*rn collection!

the late Patricia Bartlett. Who went to serious trouble and expense to track down, purchase and view pronography in all its guises, so she could then campaign against it :)

Cheers Terry

Now that makes a great deal of sense.

Cheers Terry

That was my excuse. I remember when you had to sign a declaration that you were buying your p*rn for research purposes only!

I loved the Johnny Carson bit, back in the days of the censorship controversy, where there was some nudie flick that had a newspaper ad with a picture of some girl's bare back.

Some censor had painted a bra strap across this girl's back. Carson said something like, "The sick one is the guy sitting there painting the strap!"

Cheers! Rich

Engineers think orghogonally and design stuff before they try to build it.

Programmers are more like writers; they have a vision, and craft a story that tells of their vision, and of course, every story needs to be edited, generally ad nauseam. ;-)

Except tech writers, whose skills kind of overlap - the writing has to accurately reflect reality. ;-)

Cheers! Rich

Are you claiming never to have lied?

Ian

That was his dad, in drag. It seems to run in his perverted family.

Another data point:

We had some visitors this weekend, a couple from back east. She's a computer scientist, he's an engineer who also teaches programming, both academics. It was made pretty clear to me that computer science is not immediately related to programming, and that computer science education does not seek to graduate people who can program.

John

My sister has that background, plus a math degree. In Germany they call that something like Information Science but AFAICT it's the same thing as CS. Programming is not at all the main point in this curriculum. It is mostly heavy duty math, stuff I would certainly not enjoy at all. And after we both had our degrees, she in CS and me in EE, she was clearly the one with the better math skills right off the bat. Meantime, her math skills got even better. Me? Well, math is like eating pea soup. And I don't like pea soup.

Split pea? With ham? Wonderful.

The two best programmers I know (excluding my humble self) were educated in chemistry and physics.

John

... snip ...

For long term viability nothing beats education in the fundamentals. My own background is mathematics and physics, followed by heavy hardware experience. That basis lets me acquire whatever I need. Meanwhile, to take an extreme, the poor klutzes who have been taught which button to click in Excel are floundering on anything else.

Came across 2 EE and CS doctors last week designing new kit and lamenting sadly that they'd given up on a software PID algorithm (in C of course) they'd written to replace the standard analogue PID loop control opamp, caps and R's in a piece of kit similar to what I was also working on. Seems they hadn't taken into account some mechanical aspects or noticed that two variable delay elements were at work, hence bemusement that I seemed happy to 'blindly' stick a 0.47uF in place of a 100nF to control overshoot on my own stuff. Mild prodding on my part turned up a "Yes but how could I teach that?". Seems CS teaching (like the C language) is willfully moving up a path of abstraction in a bid to avoid contact with real world messiness. ... The Philosophy depts did it, we can surely do the same!. UK (oxbridge led) academic authorities are loathe to be sullied by the word "vocational" but something needs to be done if we are to survive as a trading nation and at the end-of-the-day some poor sodding programmer will still have to make that digital PID loop actually work :)

I had lunch last week with the Dean of Science and Engineering at a major US university. He said that he agrees with a number of fellow deans at other universities: Computer Science is broken.

He talked me into endowing a modest scholarship; it *was* a pretty good lunch. I want to somehow specify that it be granted to kids who tinker with circuits, or at least program in assembly.

Good book: "Dreaming in Code"

John